


there you are

by renjuly



Series: where were you? [2]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: I need to tag more stuff hhh, also I didn’t take too long to write this so apologies for any mistakes, angels au??, chensung and norenmin if you squint but they’re mainly in part 1, fluff?? It’s better than the angst in part 1, happy ig, markhyuck, oh yeah this is a sequel btw, probably won’t make too much sense if you haven’t read the actual fic, yknow what I’m done I hope u enjoy uwu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 13:06:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16159550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renjuly/pseuds/renjuly
Summary: mark and donghyuck are together at last, it’s nice to finally meet the person you’ve fallen in love with.sequel to “where were you?”





	there you are

Dying is stressful. 

It hurts and it feels like you’re forgetting something really important. The mind goes hazy and particles of stardust begin to swirl at lightning speeds in every direction until suddenly all that is seen is the vast expanse of the universal mind. 

Mark looked down at his fingers that were no longer wrinkled or creased, but instead smooth around the edges with no visible point of where they started or ended. 

There was a feeling in his chest which was the opposite of that one may get before a big exam they hadn’t studied for, or before they tell someone some bad news. 

Or, the opposite of the feeling you get when you realise your car has knocked down so much more than a pedestrian. 

Mark couldn’t even remember what that felt like anymore. 

Somewhere between the light particles rotating around his head like fireflies, the darkness beginning to put pressure on the outer shell of mark’s body, or what was left of it. 

He let go and began speeding at an incomprehensible speed out of this world, and out of this life. 

The main difference was that Mark no longer felt the natural instinct to breathe. Other than that, he found himself exactly the same. 

He was in the bathroom of his apartment. He knew this because of his bathrobe hanging on the back of the door with his matching slippers, and the foundation stains on the white tiles of the walls that he’d never washed off after hearing how they got there. 

Oh, and his own dead body splayed across the floor of the bath, limbs in every direction and the steady flow of water from the shower head rinsing the blood that didn’t seem to stop flowing.

Mark rolled his eyes. He really died from slipping in the shower, didn’t he?

He sat on the edge of the bath and stared at his own open eyes, which were completely drained of life. He closed them softly with his thumb and index finger, but when he went to switch off the running water, he found he couldn’t touch the button. He couldn’t actually touch anything else, for that matter. Not the side of the bath, the sink, or even the stains on the walls. His hand just went right through. 

Confused, Mark just decided to sit and wait to see how long it would take someone to find his body. 

“Pathetic, isn’t it?” a voice spoke from behind him. 

Mark snapped his head around in desperation to find the source of the voice, but his efforts were fruitless. 

“Who said that? Where are you?” Mark demanded, furrowing his eyebrows and keeping his eyes pealed. 

“More like where were you?” the voice retorted, scoffing as Mark tried to listen carefully to see which side of the room it was coming from. 

“I don’t understand,” Mark spoke softly, convinced he was seeing specks of light in his peripheral vision, but when he turned to look, he could see nothing. 

Suddenly the voice started singing a unique rendition of the “dumb ways to die” song and Mark grew agitated as the voice grew closer to him but just out of his grasp. 

The singing stopped. 

“I’m right in front of you,” the voice said in a hushed tone, and Mark squinted and stared as hard as he could to try and see. 

It took a few moments, but Mark’s vision began to adjust, and those specks of light he kept seeing joined together to form the outline of someone. Someone Mark surely already knew. 

“I’m Lee Donghyuck,”

And then Mark could see. Much like himself, Donghyuck was smoother around the edges, and most definitely more full of life despite being dead. His eyes shone as they stared into Mark’s and his smile only grew as he observed Mark taking in every aspect of his form. 

His skin radiated a warmth Mark had never felt before, nor had he ever seen the literal golden glow that came with it.

Mark never understood the word ‘soulmate’ until this moment. This is what it felt like to stare into the eyes of someone who would love you unconditionally, who would be there always, in body or in soul. 

Donghyuck smiled softly, parting his lips which allowed Mark to feel his warm and even breathes against his own lips. 

“Why are you breathing?” he asked. 

“I like to,” Donghyuck replied simply, “you don’t have to, but I thinks it’s nice. It makes me feel a little less dead.” 

Donghyuck leaned back away from Mark now that he could see him properly.

“Why can’t I touch anything?” Mark asked, pushing his hand through the shower curtain as if it wasn’t even there. 

“Why can I touch that?” he asked, gesturing towards his greying corpse in the bathtub. 

“You can touch dead things,” Donghyuck replied plainly, tracing the edges of the stained tiles with his own fingers. 

“You can touch me too,” he mentioned quietly, holding out his hand without a hint of the playfulness from before. 

After a moment, Mark reached out and slowly took Donghyuck’s hand in his, noting how Donghyuck’s manual breathing hitched at their first point of contact. 

He was staring longingly at their hands, like he’d envisioned this many times before, but even in the moment it happened it didn’t feel real. Mark felt that too. 

The contact alone, after enduring the inability to touch anything but his corpse, was overwhelming. That, and this was the first time he’d touched Donghyuck while they were both in the same point concerning life and death. 

Donghyuck pulled Mark closer by his hand, and led him through the wall of the bathroom which led to the sitting room of Mark’s (and Donghyuck’s) messy apartment. It was night time, so the moon shone through the gaps in the curtains Mark had forgotten to close before he went into the shower. 

That being said, it wasn’t dark. Not when Donghyuck was there to light the entire room up. 

There were unwashed mugs at the sink of the joining kitchen, crumbs on the countertops and an opened work bag on the table next to a single flower in a small vase. The faint hum of the shower still running in the bathroom behind them made the din of the apartment that much more normal, as if there wasn’t a corpse in the midst of it. 

“This is...” Mark began. 

“Exactly how you left it?” Donghyuck finished for him, and Mark looked over to see his soulmate already staring at him. 

Mark nodded. It felt different to walk through his own home as a spirit, rather than a physical presence, haunting himself as a ghost shifting carelessly through the walls into a different existence with Donghyuck. He was still at home, but somehow he wasn’t. 

“It feels like everything would change, but it’s exactly the same as it was five minutes ago,” Donghyuck commented, as if it was he who had just died. 

Upon catching Mark’s confused expression as to why he remembered this feeling so well, he added “You never really forget,”

It had been over a decade since Donghyuck died and Mark wondered how long he spent in this point between living and ascending.

“How did you know I died?” Mark asked, moving away from Donghyuck who was staring through the gap in the curtain, unable to move it. 

“I was watching,” Donghyuck said motionlessly, keeping his eyes fixed forward. 

Suddenly, Mark started felt the air turn cold around his skin and the hairs on the back of his neck stood stiffly. He watched, frozen in place as the golden aura surrounding Donghyuck turned cold and icy. 

Donghyuck’s head snapped in Mark’s direction and he was put under a stern gaze he’d never seen the younger wear. Donghyuck’s lip curled slightly and Mark didn’t dare break the eye contact between them out of pure fear. 

“I pushed you,” Donghyuck confessed through gritted teeth, sucking in a loud ocean breath. 

Donghyuck strolled slowly towards Mark, the cold look in his eyes still very present. He took both Mark’s hands in his and finally looked away, down at the trembling fingers intertwined with his. 

Instantly, his expression softened, but he remained surrounded by particles of what Mark could only assume was negative emotion. 

“I was so sick of waiting, so fucking sick of it,” he choked out. “Why did I have to die? Why did I have to be the one to never meet my soulmate while I was alive? I wanted to let you live your life, so I waited, and I watched, and I listened every fucking time you came to my grave to talk to me. I heard your prayers, I saw you cry, and I saw you learn about me and meet my parents and friends. I wanted to be alive so bad, Mark. And now this is all we have left.”

Donghyuck swallowed thickly, rambling as if he hadn’t had over ten years to rehearse the right thing to say. 

“You’re all I have now and I’m all you have. Is that insane?” 

Donghyuck was crying, full on ugly sobbing and sniffling angrily in front of Mark. It was a pitiful sight to see. 

“It’s selfish,” Mark spat, curling his lip at Donghyuck, who was taken aback. 

“Fuck off,” he growled, “just fuck off, would you?”

“You fucking killed me so I’d be here!” Mark shot back, earning another nasty look from Donghyuck who had long ago let go off his hands and was now pacing stiffly back towards the window. 

“You killed me first!” Donghyuck retorted, his hands shaking in disbelief at the conversation he was currently having. 

Mark sighed, rubbing his temples in attempt to alleviate the increasing pressure against his skull. He thought dead people would’ve been immune to headaches. Apparently not when Donghyuck existed. 

“Come here,” Mark called, holding out his arms and sighing in defeat at the pouting Donghyuck who walked pompously towards him with his jaw pushed forward and his arms folded. Donghyuck’s chin fell softly on Mark’s shoulder as he allowed the older to envelop him into a much needed hug. Eventually, Donghyuck decided to hug back and rubbed the remainder of his tears into Mark’s neck. 

“I didn’t know you existed until I did it, I’m so sorry-“ Mark began but was cut off by Donghyuck’s muffled voice vibrating into his collarbones. 

“I know Mark. I was there every time you talked to yourself in front of my gravestone,” 

“You actually listened to all that?” Mark asked surprised, attempting to lean back and look at Donghyuck but was pulled back into their hugging position by said person. 

“Don’t let go,” he demanded, “and yes,” 

Mark felt a little bit embarrassed, and Donghyuck could tell from the change in temperature he was emitting. Donghyuck smiled softly at the red dusting lightly over his soulmate’s cheeks, so he kissed them both softly as Mark intertwined their fingers again. 

They both chose to ignore their married couple sort of argument and instead focus on the love they had both been so desperately craving. 

Mark caught Donghyuck’s lips in his and they kissed chastely through tangled hands and fingers and the butterfly kisses on Mark’s cheek from Donghyuck’s eyelashes. The feeling was indescribable; one from a dream or another life, which technically it was. 

They pulled apart slowly, Mark feeling Donghyuck’s breath on his lips again, and this time he decided to breathe along with him. It was hard, breathing manually when there was no actual necessity to do so. But it made Donghyuck feel more alive, and it made Mark feel closer to Donghyuck, so they breathed together unevenly and awkwardly and completely out of sync with each other. Just two dudes being ghosts that forgot how to breathe normally.

Donghyuck closed his eyes and rested his forehead against Mark’s and they stayed like that for a while since there was really nothing else to say. 

“Where do you wanna go now?” Donghyuck asked quietly “The world is quite literally ours tonight,”

Mark raised his eyebrow. “Just tonight?”

“Tonight and tomorrow and forever, if you keep breathing with me like that,” Donghyuck whispered in response.

“What do you mean?” Mark asked, and Donghyuck pulled himself back from Mark’s grip to look him in the eye. 

“Usually you stay around here, in between life and heaven or whatever happens after, for a short while and then you move on. I’ve stayed here for years because I kept breathing,” 

“Because it keeps you closer to being alive?” Mark concluded, and Donghyuck nodded. He took Mark’s hand and led him over to the gap in the curtain, where Mark could see the moon high up in the sky, and the night life of the city bustling beneath the fingertips Donghyuck brushed but never touched against the glass. 

“It’s not as lonely as it seems,” said Donghyuck, gesturing for Mark to look further than the mortals on the street busying themselves with late night shopping and partying, and instead look closely for the many other shining people just like Donghyuck, sitting on window ledges and along rooftops, staring lovingly down at the people below. 

Some were walking with groups of people, or laughing inside bars, or dancing along to the music inside expensive clubs. Mark understood now, it made them feel less dead, more alive, but still afraid for what would come next. 

He looked back at Donghyuck, who was smiling over at Mark’s calendar on the wall.

“Isn’t tonight bowling night?” he asked with a hint of mischief in his voice. 

“Your point?” Mark asked, pretending not to catch onto where Donghyuck was implying they go. 

Donghyuck playfully rolled his eyes and took Mark’s hand again, running through the walls and passing the corpse as they headed towards the bowling alley in an effortless sprint. 

When they arrived, sure enough the five very men they were looking for were gathered outside in their usual spot, waiting for Mark, who seemed to be a little bit on the tardy side of things. 

“Mark’s late,” Jeno informed everyone of something which they were all aware of. Mark silently wished that right in that moment they’d be aware of his presence, rather than his absence, but how could he expect mere humans to to comprehend this concept of existence after death. 

“Wonder why?” Donghyuck smiled at Mark, but it didn’t seem to be the time for jokes. Mark was looking sorrowfully at the five men in front of him, who all had unknowingly had lost another friend that night. He found it hard to fight back tears, even more so when he felt Donghyuck’s arm wrap around him. 

For the first time that night, Donghyuck felt guilt. He could’ve at least given Mark one more night to say goodbye, to have some sort of closure or finality that Donghyuck never really got.

Part of him still felt like Mark deserved it. For when Mark carried out the life Donghyuck was supposed to live. For finally attending Chenle and Jisung’s wedding years later, and forming bonds with the people who used to love Donghyuck like that. 

Donghyuck was jealous that Mark had everything he used to have, so worried that Mark had become a permanent replacement that he couldn’t bare to watch any longer. He either had to let go, or to take Mark with him, but Donghyuck wasn’t strong enough to leave. 

“I’m sorry,” he confessed suddenly, forcing Mark’s eyes away from the other men in a confusion. 

Donghyuck might have been about to speak again, and say something about how Mark was right to call him selfish, but he cut himself off. Mark held him close by a gentle had on his waist, dismissing anything Donghyuck thought he should be sorry for. They were there together now, with their friends, which was all that mattered. Even the dead have to accept that life goes on. 

Neither of them had a chance to give a proper goodbye to the people that connected them. They deserved one night before all the happiness which had been restored was torn down again by the news of Mark’s death. 

Finished with waiting, the five headed into the bowling alley which was subtly brighter than usual due to two extra guests. It wasn’t rare for one of the group to miss a bowling night as they were all adults in their early forties and barely had enough time for sleep, let alone bowling. 

Tonight, however, Mark and Donghyuck would mess with their ghostly abilities and spend one last night in bliss with their friends; the people who were more than soulmates to both of them. 

Mark inhaled while Donghyuck exhaled, and together they helped Chenle push his bowling ball towards the pins with imaginary blood pumping through their veins to an imaginary beating heart. 

Mark was never destined to live with Donghyuck, or die with him. It was this kind of fate that no one but them would know. Being here as shining people, in this shining world, existing somehow in the lives of the people they’d miss.

Although their breathing was staggered and inhuman, carrying voices and laughs that would never echo, Donghyuck and Mark would live on, in one way or another. 

And of course, it was a strike. 

-


End file.
